Calif. urges teachers to scrap 4th-grade mission project
By Diana Lambert, Sacramento Bee
Put away the Popsicle sticks, glue and sugar cubes. The fourth-grade mission project, a rite of passage for elementary students for decades, may be on its way out.
California’s new history and social science framework, passed by the state Board of Education last year, recommends against the longtime tradition of building miniature replicas of the state’s Spanish colonial missions, calling it insensitive. Thousands of Native Americans died from introduced diseases and were forced to labor at the missions, it notes.
Instead, it recommends that educators spend time teaching students about the impacts of the missions on the state’s people and its natural environment.